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Sizing Up a Superstorm: Exploring the Role of Recalled Experience and Attribution of Responsibility in Judgments of Future Hurricane Risk: Sizing Up a Superstorm
Risk Analysis
Abstract
Research suggests that hurricane-related risk perception is a critical predictor of behavioral response, such as evacuation. Less is known, however, about the precursors of these subjective risk judgments, especially when time has elapsed from a focal event. Drawing broadly from the risk communication, social psychology, and natural hazards literature, and specifically from concepts adapted from the risk information seeking and processing model and the protective action decision model, we examine how individuals' distant recollections, including attribution of responsibility for the effects of a storm, attitude toward relevant information, and past hurricane experience, relate to risk judgment for a future, similar event. The present study reports on a survey involving U.S. residents in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York (n = 619) impacted by Hurricane Sandy. While some results confirm past findings, such as that hurricane experience increases risk judgment, others suggest additional complexity, such as how various types of experience (e.g., having evacuated vs. having experienced losses) may heighten or attenuate individual-level judgments of responsibility. We suggest avenues for future research, as well as implications for federal agencies involved in severe weather/natural hazard forecasting and communication with public audiences.
... Hypothesis 3 (H3) posits that "Emergency information (EI) directly influences citizens' perceived attribution of responsibility (PAR)." The "attribution of responsibility" of the protective action decision model (PADM) includes not only perceived personal responsibility but also "shared responsibility" [24]. It finds that emergency information is positively correlated with attribution of responsibility, including government, enterprise, and personal responsibility [25]. ...
... It finds that emergency information is positively correlated with attribution of responsibility, including government, enterprise, and personal responsibility [25]. The information received can shape perceptions of government accountability while also increasing personal responsibility [24]. ...
... SEM analysis shows that emergency information is positively correlated with perceived risk, perceived coping ability, and perceived attribution of responsibility. This aligns with the findings of Wood et al., Liu et al.,and Rickard et al. [19,20,24]. Emergency information is closely linked to social media attention. ...
[Background/significance]
Rainstorm floods have become a high-impact natural disaster and are expected to become more extreme shortly, seriously threatening human safety. Although the government issues timely and precise rainstorm flood warning information, citizens remain indifferent and engage in maladaptive behavior. Therefore, understanding the relationship between emergency information, psychological cognition, individual characteristics, and protective behavior is crucial for effective risk information communication and evacuation guidance.
[Method/process]
This study utilizes the protection motivation theory (PMT) and protective action decision model (PADM) to develop a structural equation model (SEM) that evaluates the factors driving both protective and non-protective behaviors of individuals to rainstorm flood disasters.
[Result/conclusion]
The findings indicate that the disaster experience and emergency information received significantly shape how individuals perceive risks, their ability to manage them, and who should be accountable for the disaster. The findings further indicate that how people view their ability to handle a risk situation (perceived coping ability) and who they think is responsible for the situation (perceived attribution of responsibility) directly influence whether they will take protective behaviors. Based on these results, this study puts forward policy recommendations for emergency information release strategies to enhance citizens' willingness to adopt protective behaviors.
... Often used as recall bias or selection bias on the part of subjects that do not report accurate information (e.g., Crump, 2020;Liu et al., 2019;Rickard et al. 2019), or risk-related worry (Parker et al., 2020). However, all risk communicators have their own biases as well. ...
... Illusion of control People mistake control over exposure (e.g., controlling drinking water access gives control over contamination) (e.g., Hooks et al., 2019) Judgment Perceptions. Risk perception is a predictor of response, but little is known about subjective risk judgements (Rickard et al., 2019). ...
... Subjective risk judgments Specific attributes of decisions may not yet be clear (see Rickard et al., 2019). ...
Risk communication is often viewed as imparting information and perhaps as a two‐way dialogue. Risk communication inadequacies on the part of both “communicator” and “community members” can lead to adverse consequences and amplify environmental justice disparities. The paper suggests a transformational approach where risk communicators must learn to trust community experts and their knowledge base (and act upon it), where risk information imparted by risk communicators addresses what communities are most concerned about (as well as risk from specific chemicals or radionuclides), and where risk information and assessments address underlying issues and disparities, as well as cultural traditions (among others). Providing risk probabilities is no longer sufficient; western science may not be enough, and community and native scientific knowledge is needed. Risk communication (or information transfer) for environmental risks that are ongoing usually applies to low‐income, minority communities—people living in dense inner cities, rural communities, Native American communities—or to people living near a risky facility. Communication within this context requires mutual trust, listening and respect, as well as acceptance of indigenous and community knowledge as equally valuable. Examples are given to illustrate a community perspective.
... Extant research across disciplines has examined how society attributes responsibility toward social problems (e.g., climate change; gender inequality; obesity) (Niederdeppe, Roh, & Shapiro, 2015;Rickard et al., 2017). Since Iyengar's (1991) seminal study of responsibility framing and Weiner's (1995) work on attribution theory, subsequent studies have focused on both societal-level and individual-level consequences of responsibility attribution. ...
... However, Griffin et al. (2008) do not report the unique contribution of attribution to information processing. Other works on responsibility attribution in risk management focus on risk perception and behavior response in distinct contexts ranging from floods (e.g., Kievik & Gutteling, 2011), earthquakes (e.g., Paton, Bajek, Okada, & McIvor, 2010), to hurricanes (e.g., Rickard et al., 2017). While these studies provide a solid foreground for our study, they also highlight the scant research related to the relationship between responsibility attribution and information processing. ...
This research focuses on three factors that influence how individuals cognitively process information related to the coronavirus outbreak. Guided by dual‐process theories of information processing, we establish how the two different information processing modes (system 1: heuristic processing; system 2: systematic processing) are influenced by individuals’ responsibility attribution, discrete negative emotions, and risk perception. In an experiment, participants were exposed to a news article that either blames China (n = 445) or does not blame China (n = 498) for the pandemic. Results reveal that exposure to the responsibility attribution frame led individuals to engage in more heuristic processing, but it did not influence systematic processing. Discrete negative emotions and risk perception mediated the relationship between responsibility attribution and information processing. The indirect relationships suggest a more intricate process underlying heuristic processing and systematic processing. In particular, information processing styles seem to be determined by social judgment surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
... This relationship is explained in part by heightened cognitive and affective risk perceptions (Demuth, Morss, Lazo, & Trumbo, 2016). Additionally, other research finds that people who reported direct or indirect experience with Superstorm Sandy reported greater risk perceptions regarding a future storm similar to Sandy (Rickard et al., 2017). Further, research on natural disasters more broadly shows an association between personal experience and preventative measures taken in anticipation of a natural disaster. ...
... Although we demonstrate the importance of past behavior and confidence, future research should investigate the relative importance of these variables compared to other known factors (e.g. credibility of sources encouraging evacuation; Rickard et al., 2017). Additionally, in the current study, the assessment of past experience was limited to evacuation behavior during Superstorm Sandy, which likely does not capture the full scope of people's past experiences with hurricanes or evacuation. ...
As hurricanes intensify and more people are at risk, there is a clear need to understand the evacuation behavior of coastal residents. Of particular relevance is the role of past experience in evacuation decisions, about which evidence is mixed. In the current study, we use the Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) to show that expectations of future hurricane evacuation are strongly predicted by the combination of past behavior and confidence in that past behavior. Specifically, we show that people who evacuated in the past are substantially more likely to expect to do so in the future when they have high confidence in their past decision to evacuate. Likewise, people who did not evacuate are substantially less likely to expect to evacuate in the future when they have high confidence in their past decision. This pattern was consistent across all hurricane intensities tested and extended to risk perceptions of future hurricanes. These findings have implications for risk communication about impending extreme weather events.
... Most previous PADM research has focused on natural disasters [34][35][36]. The PADM has not often been used in the context of technological disasters [34] and has not been used to look at the impact of the combination of exposure to multiple hurricane events and oil spills. ...
... The PADM has not often been used in the context of technological disasters [34] and has not been used to look at the impact of the combination of exposure to multiple hurricane events and oil spills. Though previous research with the PADM has indicated that disaster experience increases threat perception, this relationship has not always been consistent [21] and association with demographic factors has been variable, indicating that there is a need for further exploration of the relationship between demographic variables and the PADM [35,36]. Though prior studies have explored the relationship between previous hurricane exposure and decision-making (e.g. ...
The relationship between gender, disaster exposure, and the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is explored through a survey administered to 326 Gulf Coast residents following the Deep-Water Horizon oil spill. Structural Equation Modeling was used to find that disaster exposure demonstrated a significant negative effect on PADM, such that greater exposure was associated with lower scores (g = −3.09, p
... In disaster management, quick reaction and evaluation are crucial. As a result, research on creating instruments for quick reaction to and evaluation of natural disasters [4,5] has expanded in consideration emerging demands over the past few decades [6]. ...
This researches how to explores the potential of social media in improving megathrust disaster monitoring and early warning systems, focusing on two regions in Indonesia: Gunung Kidul and Tanggamus. Using a quantitative approach through a questionnaire-based survey, the research reveals that most respondents (70% in Gunung Kidul and 85% in Tanggamus) consider the internet/social media as an important source of information during disasters. Furthermore, 70% of respondents in Gunung Kidul and 85% in Tanggamus are willing to receive official warnings through these platforms. Nonetheless, challenges related to data verification and reliability of information on social media still exist. Only 12% of respondents in Gunung Kidul and 8% in Tanggamus considered social media to be very reliable as a source of disaster information. This finding underscores the importance of collaboration between the government, disaster management agencies and social media platforms to ensure the accuracy of information disseminated. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence on the potential of utilizing social media to improve early warning systems and response to megathrust disasters. The integration of social media into disaster mitigation strategies can provide significant benefits, especially in terms of early detection, enhancing situational awareness, and facilitating communication and collaboration during disasters.
... Disaster risk perception is a personal judgement about the perceived likelihood, perceived severity, and perceived vulnerability to a disaster (Ng, 2022). Studies thus far have operationalized risk perception for various disasters, such as floods (Miceli et al., 2008), landslides (Ho et al., 2008), and hurricanes or cyclones (Rickard et al., 2017). Higher risk perception has been associated with more individual and household protective actions (Lindell & Perry, 2012;van Valkengoed & Steg, 2019). ...
Risk perception influences the perceived salience of various policy issues. In this study, we examine the pathways through which environmental identity influences the perceived salience of two kinds of policy issues—climate change (climate mitigation and climate adaptation) and development (economic growth and infrastructure). Based on a dataset of 503 respondents from coastal communities along the east coast of the United States, our findings indicate that environmental identity is associated with a greater perceived salience of climate mitigation, and that this relationship is mediated by hydrometeorological disaster risk perception. While we found no significant total effect of environmental identity on the perceived salience of climate adaptation, perceived salience of infrastructure development, and perceived salience of economic growth, hydrometeorological disaster risk perception was found to fully mediate all three relationships. Also, the mediated relationships were found to be significantly moderated by gender identity, but not by age (except for the perceived salience of infrastructure development). The study highlights the pivotal role of hydrometeorological risk perception in modifying the perceived importance of different policy issues among environmentalists and has implications for policy and planning in coastal regions.
... The research on the connection between attribution of responsibility and risk perception and behavior is already extensive (see, e.g. Dawson 2020; Rickard et al. 2017), but the understanding of how different types of responsibility messages affect citizens' responsibility beliefs and preparedness behavior is still novel (Van de Poel and Fahlquist 2012), compared to, for example, the well-considered effect of fear-appeal messages in public risk and preparedness campaigns (see, e.g. Rogers 1983;Ruiter, Kessels, Peters et al. 2014;Witte 1992). ...
Responsibility awareness is a vital component of several countries' crises preparedness policies. In recent years there has also been a formal shift in responsibility, from state level to regional and local levels, as well as to households. The shift is emphasized in risk communication activities targeted at the citizens. However, even with the close connection between risk communication and responsibility for risk prevention and preparedness measures, surprisingly little is known about the relationship between communicating responsibility, and the effects on responsibility awareness and self-preparedness. The aim of the study is to identify how citizens' reception of responsibility messages concerning a crisis event, influence how residents view their own responsibility awareness and self-preparedness intent. In our study we selected a cyber-crisis scenario as a case to prepare for. A post-test only quasi-experimental cross-sectional survey research design conducted on data collected from 3395 survey participants of the Citizen panel revealed that the responsibility messages with the government taking almost all the responsibility, does not lead to a decrease in the citizens' own responsibility awareness, and that a responsibility message with shared responsibility but also a message where the citizen is left to their own devices, both lead to an increased own responsibility awareness. However, neither of the responsibility messages lead to an increased self-preparedness intent.
... In many cases, people were more likely to evacuate when they perceived higher risk (Stein et al., 2013;Wallace et al., 2016) or when the risk was personalized-e.g., their home or family is at risk (Huang et al., 2012). Several studies found that having a past experience with a disaster made a person more likely to follow protective measures (Rickard et al., 2017;Taaffe et al., 2013;Trumbo et al., 2014). However, Tinsley and colleagues (2012) found that if people had experienced a near-miss event (an event that could have had significant impact but for some reason did not), they are more likely to engage in riskier behavior when the next event of that type occurs. ...
... To illustrate the mechanism by which warning messages influence behavioral reactions, the protective action decision model (PADM) was proposed to explain people's actions in response to natural disasters [5], which has been applied in floods [6], hurricanes [7], and wildfires [8]. The PADM suggests that warning messages can elicit perceptual and emotional responses to threats, resulting in behavioral responses, and these processes depend on receiver characteristics, such as their beliefs. ...
Preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic are especially critical to the protection of individuals whose family members or acquaintances have been infected. However, limited research has explored the influence of infection cues on preventive behaviors. This study proposed an interaction model of environment-cognitive/affective-behavior to elucidate the mechanism by which infection cues influence preventive behaviors and the roles of risk perception, negative emotions, and perceived efficacy in that influence. To explore the relationships among these factors, we conducted a cross-sectional online survey in 34 provinces in China during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 26,511 participants responded to the survey, and 20,205 valid responses (76.2%) were obtained for further analysis. The moderated mediation results show that infection cues positively predicted preventive behaviors in a manner mediated by risk perception and negative emotions. Moreover, perceived efficacy moderated the influence of infection cues not only on preventive behaviors but also on risk perception and negative emotions. The higher the perceived efficacy, the stronger these influences were. These findings validated our model, which elucidates the mechanisms underlying the promoting effect of infection cues on preventive behaviors during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. The implications of these results for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond are discussed.
... Attribution judgments and psychological distance as mechanisms Attributions of causal responsibility is a form of social knowledge (Iyengar, 1989) linked to beliefs about the causes of a social issue, which can shape the formation of public opinion and support for policies to address the issue. Research on risk communication has addressed various factors, from perceptions of risk to risk-relevant experience and media frames, that potentially shape perceptions of attributions of responsibility (Hart, 2011;Rickard, 2014;Rickard et al., 2017). In particular, media framing is a powerful social tool that could influence individuals' perceptions of attributions of responsibility (Iyengar, 1989). ...
This study used two randomized experiments in a prospective design (Study 1 N = 297, Study 2 N = 296) to examine how multilevel causal attribution dimensions (internal vs. external to an individual or a country) shape domestic and foreign policy support to counter transboundary risk. Results from Study 1 and 2 showed that external‐country (vs. internal‐country) causal attribution reduced perceptions of internal‐country attributions of responsibility, which had a cross‐lagged effect on support for domestic‐industry policies to mitigate the risk. In contrast, perceptions of external‐country attributions of responsibility increased support for foreign policies in a 2‐week follow up. This study offers theoretical insights into the demarcation of multilevel causal attribution dimensions in studying media framing effects. It also highlights some important causal mechanisms of how media frames shape public support for policies aimed at transboundary risk mitigation.
... The use of new technologies to deliver a rapid response and assessment has gained research attention in recent decades (Erdik et al. 2014;Rickard et al. 2017). Research on social media shows, for instance, that people affected by disasters are not passive recipients of information; instead, they produce, seek, and share updated, accurate, and reliable information during disasters (Tagliacozzo and Magni 2016;Vieweg et al. 2014). ...
... In other words, a crisis is often considered a risk "come to life" (Lachlan & Spence, 2010;Sandman, 1998). While extant research using attribution theory has examined the relationship between risk and attributions of blame (e.g., Johnson, Hallman, & Cuite, 2015;Kouabenan, 1998;Rickard, 2014b;Rickard et al., 2017), many of these studies use crisis style stories in order to understand attributions. Johnson et al. (2015) in their study on a food contamination incident, presented participants with a story about a hypothetical Salmonella bacteria outbreak in a food processing plant (a crisis) and studied their attributions. ...
In crisis situations, time is of the essence. Effective messaging to individuals at risk is critical to mitigating the most severe outcomes. Extant crisis communication literature has focused on differentiating crisis types based on perceived blame, particularly in cases of for‐profit company malfeasance, but less work has been done to understand how the public makes these types of attributions. This quantitative systematic review investigates the relationship between severity of a large‐scale crisis outcome and attributions of blame toward relevant entities. Moderators of interest include the attribution term used with participants (e.g., blame, responsibility), the type of crisis event, and the entity presented as at fault. Overall, a small but significant positive relationship is identified in the majority of studies between severity of a large‐scale crisis outcome and attributions of blame. Results suggest that while crisis type and entity to blame are moderators, the attribution term(s) used with participants plays a less significant role. Implications and future directions are considered.
... Responsibility attribution is the ascription of events to individuals or organizations deemed responsible for either causing the events or identifying solutions (Rickard et al., 2017;Walster, 1966). Since responsibility is often linked with adverse outcomes, it is almost concomitant with terms such as blame or liability (Cho & Gower, 2006;Rickard, Scherer, & Newman, 2011;Weiner, 1995). ...
This research examines three distinct processes that influence Americans’ prosocial responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a nationally representative sample, participants read either a mock-up news article on COVID-19 with a clear responsibility attribution (n = 496) or one without (n = 513) in a survey embedded experiment. Participants exposed to the responsibility attribution condition engaged in less systematic processing; systematic processing and all emotions mediated the relationship between responsibility attribution and support for government response measures. For donation intention, only systematic processing and the two socially oriented emotions were significant mediators. In essence, responsibility attribution in media coverage can exert powerful influence on public perception in an ongoing crisis.
... Among these policies, social cohesion is addressed, as a community that establishes bonds and communication avenues before a disaster can have a better probability of managing risks during a disaster and abiding by rebuilding strategies after a disaster. Rickard et al. (2017) combine risk assessment and social psychology to estimate the perceived risk to disasters. They collected surveys to examine how people react to future disasters based on their previous experience and judgments. ...
Natural disasters affect thousands of communities every year, leaving behind human losses, billions of dollars in rebuilding efforts, and psychological affectation in survivors. How fast a community recovers from a disaster or even how well a community can mitigate risk from disasters depends on how resilient that community is. One main factor that influences communities' resilience is how a community comes together in times of need. Social cohesion is considered to be“the glue that holds society together, which can be better examined in a critical situation. There is no consensus on measuring social cohesion, but recent literature indicates that social media communications and communities play an essential role in today's disaster mitigation strategies.This research explores how to quantify social cohesion through social media outlets during disasters. The approach involves combining and implementing text processing techniques and graph network analysis to understand the relationships between nine different types of participants during hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Visualizations are employed to illustrate these connections, their evolution before, during, and after disasters, and the degree of social cohesion throughout their timeline. The proposed measurement of social cohesion through social media networks presented in this work can provide future risk management and disaster mitigation policies. This social cohesion measure identifies the types of actors in a social network and how this network varies daily. Therefore, decisionmakers could use this measure to release strategic communication before, during, and after a disaster strikes, thus providing relevant information to people in need.
... (d) personal experience they had with each of the phenomena (yes/no question), which could be decisive when deciding future protective measures [27], being related [28,29] or not [30] to future behavior; ...
Islands are often considered excellent socio-ecological laboratories for testing the rapidity of global change since they experience the climate effects of sea-level rise faster than other areas. The Azores are a Portuguese volcanic archipelago located on the junction of the three tectonic plates: the Eurasian, the African and the North American plates. São Miguel, the main island of the Azores archipelago, hosts three active volcanoes, but the last significant volcanic eruption was the Capelinhos volcano on the island of Faial in 1957. Hence, the Azores offers the opportunity to assess insular risk awareness, facing both telluric and climate-related hazards. The key research question emerges from their natural situation: how does the local population perceive the threat of the natural hazards that occur in Azores? Because risks are socially constructed and depend on the uniqueness of territories, risk mitigation strategies must focus on the individual experiences of local dwellers, as a relationship between risk awareness and such strategies may be expected. To analyze this relationship, a web-based survey with a questionnaire including these variables was administered to a sample of Azoreans. The study aimed to assess risk awareness of the Azorean population and find a relationship between this and reported mitigation strategies. The results gave a preliminary insight into Azorean risk awareness of natural hazards and showed a significant positive relationship between risk awareness-raising activities and reported mitigation strategies. This is relevant information for municipalities and regional governments of areas with similar risk exposures, showing that, although risk awareness alone is not enough for measures to be implemented, it may be an important motivational first step for this to occur.
... Hence, as warning information sources increased, the likelihood that people took protective action increased in Joplin but not in Tuscaloosa. Similarly, individuals with more experience with hurricanes rated hurricanes as having higher risk (Rickard et al., 2017). Besides past experience, knowing if a protective action will actually be effective (i.e., protective action efficacy) is often strongly related to protective action (Terpstra & Lindell, 2013). ...
... For example, image-based warning signs are found to be better at communicating risk, while text-based warning signs are more effective when setting the context for safe recreational choices in parks (Towner, 2019). Future research could examine whether and how perceptions of risk and responsibility varies depending on different types of risk communication provided by park management agencies, particularly where perceptions of information source credibility question the usefulness of risk information that can affect perceptions of responsibility (Rickard et al., 2017). ...
Self-guided recreational visits to protected areas can involve exposure to a variety of environmental hazards and the risk of injury or death. Accidents and incidents occurring in these areas may be followed by litigation actions against managing authorities. If visits to national parks are framed as managed tourism and recreation products, do visitors expect that natural park experiences are safe?
The thesis is a ‘PhD by publication’ comprising five original journal articles. The first paper explores responsibility for safety from the perspective of protected area management agencies in Australia, defining the context within which risk management decisions are made. The second and the third paper then focus on the examination of the extent and nature of visitor risk. First, trends and patterns of visitor incident occurrence in Western Australian protected areas are analysed. Aspects that contribute towards unintentional injuries are then identified and the importance of comprehensive incident reporting is discussed. The final two papers consider the visitors’ perspective of risk and responsibility for safety. Four visitor groups are identified that differed in their perceptions on responsibility-sharing in four Western Australian parks. The final paper examines visitors’ expectations of the level of risk management control and explores aspects that contribute to visitors feeling safe in parks.
Adopting an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach, the research includes an email-based Delphi study, an epidemiological approach to analyse visitor incident data, and a fieldwork component with data obtained through a visitor questionnaire. Each study was driven by an underlying curiosity about how visitors approach risk, how much management guidance is demanded by visitors in natural tourism settings and what elements affect individual efforts to staying safe. Park managers and visitors largely agreed that management agencies have some obligation to manage the safety of park experiences, albeit acknowledging that visitor behaviour is a significant driver of incident occurrences. Many of the visitors sampled in this research attributed at least some responsibility for safety to management agencies and responsibility-sharing perceptions affected some aspects of preparedness for risk.
Results of this thesis suggest that risk management and control is a desired attribute of nature-based experiences in recreational protected areas, with the extent of management intervention affecting visitors’ confidence to deal with an emergency situation during their visit. However, park management agencies need to consider the wider implications when additional risk management measures are introduced if they affect people’s appreciation of danger and their perceptions on the requirement to prepare for risk.
https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/60279/
... Research into public perceptions, expectations, and decision making related to hazardous weather continues to increase. Examples of such literature exist for hurricanes (Meyer et al. 2014, Rickard et al. 2017, tornadoes (Jaunernic and Van Den Broeke 2016), and floods (Becker et al. 2015). ...
National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters across the west coast of the United States often deal with cool season hail showers that produce hazardous driving conditions. These small hail events, with diameters averaging 5.8 mm, occur with cold upper troughs that support weak instability favorable for low-topped convection and reflectivity values averaging 48 dBZ. The public generally assumes that heavy snow is common across west coast mountains, while heavy rain prevails near sea level. However, motorists can be caught offguard when wet, relatively warm low elevation roadways suddenly transition to icy hail-covered conditions. Thus, west coast small hail events represent an opportunity for the NWS to provide tailored messaging that can modify public perceptions and optimize outcomes. This research examines environments supportive of accumulating small hail over the western United States during the period 2008–2018, and supplements the environmental analysis with a summary of enhanced impact-based decision support techniques used to alert NWS partners and the general public.
... Other behavioral outcomes that factored frequently in risk communication research were audience's willingness to take protective actions and seek risk information. Among prominent theoretical frameworks, the Protective Action Decision Model (Lindell & Perry, 2012), originally posited to predict behavioral intentions in the face of "natural" disasters, such as hurricanes (Rickard et al., 2017b), wildfires (McCaffrey, Wilson, & Konar, 2018, and tornadoes (Miran, Ling, Gerard, & Rothfusz, 2019), was also used to examine infectious diseases (Johnson, 2019) and chemical spills (Heath, Lee, Palenchar, & Lemon, 2018). Efforts to understand information seeking behaviors frequently built on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model (Yang, Aloe, & Feeley, 2014), which integrates messenger, message, and audience characteristics to predict information seeking behaviors. ...
The 40th Anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis presents an apt time to step back and review the field of risk communication. In this review, we first evaluate recent debates over the field's current state and future directions. Our takeaway is that efforts to settle on a single, generic version of what constitutes risk communication will be less productive than an open‐minded exploration of the multiple forms that comprise today's vibrant interdisciplinary field. We then review a selection of prominent cognitive, cultural, and social risk communication scholarship appearing in the published literature since 2010. Studies on trust in risk communication messengers continued to figure prominently, while new research directions emerged on the opportunities and critical challenges of enhancing transparency and using social media. Research on message attributes explored how conceptual insights particularly relating to framing, affective and emotional responses, and uncertainty might be operationalized to improve message effectiveness. Studies consistently demonstrated the importance of evaluation and how varying single attributes alone is unlikely to achieve desired results. Research on risk communication audiences advanced on risk perception and multiway engagement with notable interest in personal factors such as gender, race, age, and political orientation. We conclude by arguing that the field's interdisciplinary tradition should be further nurtured to drive the next evolutionary phase of risk communication research.
... Although RPA and ISE are seemingly related, previous studies have focused mainly on relationships between risk perception and need for information-seeking (Huurne and Gutteling 2008;Terpstra et al. 2014;Cahyanto et al. 2016) instead of actual information-seeking ability. Little research has examined their theoretical relationship within the context of response to disasters, especially in the areas prone to frequent flooding (Zhu et al. 2011;Richard et al. 2017;Schumann et al. 2018). Therefore, we examined the relationship between the two theoretical constructs and, to some extent, their reciprocal predictability. ...
Floods are among the most frequent and devastating natural hazards and disasters in many southern states in the United States. This study examined the relationship and reciprocal predictability between two theoretical constructs risk perception attitude (RPA) and information-seeking efficacy (ISE)-in regard to pluvial floods. In addition, this study extended these theoretical constructs to investigate differences in RPA and ISE among potential audience segments, providing practitioners with applicable insights for designing effective flood prevention and risk management campaigns. Analysis of data from 716 residents in south Louisiana revealed a statistically strong relationship between RPA and ISE. This research also identified specific audience segments that would benefit from an increase in RPA and ISE concerning floods. These meaningful findings inform a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the relationship between RPA and ISE and guide future disaster preparation campaigns and policies.
... Additionally, the variable of personal experience of natural hazard (yes/no) could be of decisive importance when it comes to deciding whether to take or not to take precautionary measures to protect in the future, as well as to evacuate during future events such as floods or storms, since some territories are more prone to certain hazards than others [45]. For example, evidence is mixed for the case of previous experience with hurricane and its link with future evacuation behaviour, demonstrating previous experience as unrelated [46], or related [47] to future behaviour. As far as floods are concerned, there are numerous studies that show that the direct experience with a flood leaves the individual capable to better evaluate the probability that a similar event could occur in the future [50]. ...
North Morocco (region Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima) is characterized by high demographic and economic pressures, which intensify the vulnerability of the coastal areas. Morocco lies both along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coast, having a rich relief of mountain chains (Atlas and Rif). This diverse context induces the challenge of adapting to environments that are drastically different, and of answering the question to which extent the local population is aware of different natural risks. Risk awareness is addressed as a predictor of precautionary behaviour in a questionnaire-based survey. Here the variables explaining the readiness of inhabitants to protect themselves and their belongings from natural risks in the present and the willingness to invest and to protect in the future are explored. Furthermore, based on the different response patterns in the survey, we used multiple correspondence analysis to identify profiles of typical dwellers. The results indicate local regional differences, where the Rif Mountain dwellers are more prone to protect themselves than the ones living in other parts of North Morocco. Finally, environmental identity indicates that the relationship with nature has an impact on risk awareness and precautionary behaviour. This study brings out information which could be useful for policy makers who should promote ecological concerns and encourage local action in resolving environmental issues when promoting risk mitigation measures.
... People's risk perceptionrelated tweets include assessments of their exposure to harm based on where they live geographically (i.e., proximity to the ocean), vertically (i.e., what floor they live on), and structurally (i.e., what kind of building they reside in). Two common ways of parsing and measuring people's hurricane risk perceptions are as exposure and severity (Lazo et al. 2015;Morss et al. 2016Morss et al. , 2018Rickard et al. 2017), but these three aspects of perceived exposure revealed by our analysis indicate the nuanced ways that people think about their risk. ...
This article investigates the dynamic ways that people communicate, assess, and respond as a weather threat evolves. It uses social media data, which offer unique records of what people convey about their real-world risk contexts. Twitter narratives from 53 people who were in a mandatory evacuation zone in a New York City neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 were qualitatively analyzed. The study provides rich insight into the complex, dynamic information behaviors and risk assessments of people at risk, and it illustrates how social media data can be collected, sampled, and analyzed to help provide this understanding. Results show that this sample of people at significant risk attended to forecast information and evacuation orders as well as multiple types of social and environmental cues. Although many tweeted explicitly about the mandatory evacuation order, forecast information was usually referenced only implicitly. Social and environmental cues grew more important as the threat approached and often triggered heightened risk perceptions or protective actions. The results also reveal the importance of different aspects of people’s cognitive and affective risk perceptions as well as specific emotions (e.g., fear, anger) for understanding risk assessments. People discussed a variety of preparatory and protective behavioral responses and exhibited multiple types of coping responses (e.g., humor) as the threat evolved. People’s risk assessments and responses were closely intertwined, and their risk perceptions were not continuously elevated as the hurricane approached; they exhibited different ways of interpreting, coping, and responding as they accessed and processed evolving information about the threat.
... Past experiences with a hazard can influence how people recognize, assess, and respond to future risks (see reviews in [50,82,83]). Thus, a number of studies have examined the role of prior experience in hurricane evacuation decision making [19,20,72,84,85]. However, findings are inconsistent across these studies, with experience sometimes having a positive, negative, or no significant effect. ...
This article uses data from an online survey-based experiment to investigate how risk communications and individual differences influence people's responses to approaching hurricane risks. Survey data were collected from 1716 residents of coastal areas of the USA affected by Hurricane Sandy. Respondents were randomly assigned to receive a combination of textual messages about a hypothetical approaching hurricane, including hazard-based, impact-based, and fear-based messages. The analysis examines how the experimental messages influenced respondents' evacuation intentions, risk perceptions, efficacy beliefs, and perceptions of the information and its source. The influence of non-message factors, including respondents' actual and perceived geographical exposure to hurricane-related risks, evacuation planning, and hurricane-related experiences, is also investigated. The results indicate that the high-impact and fear messages increased evacuation intentions, risk perceptions, and response efficacy, but the effects were small. The hazard message manipulations did not significantly influence most of the dependent variables examined; in particular, neither of the two storm surge messages tested increased evacuation intentions or risk perceptions relative to the wind-only or flood message. There were also no significant differences in message effects among respondents who lived or thought they lived in areas at higher risk. Further, several individual difference variables examined influenced evacuation intentions more than the message variations. Overall, experience evacuating for Sandy was the strongest predictor of evacuation intentions. These results indicate the importance of designing and evaluating hazard risk communications in the context of the other messages people are receiving and the individual differences that influence protective decision making.
SARS‐CoV‐2 represents a direct threat to the population, with concerns for public health being cited as justification for a range of protective action recommendations and governmental policies. At the same time, the economic impacts associated with both experiencing COVID‐19 and/or its associated protective measures have featured prominently in debates of how the pandemic should be managed. While the widespread presence of COVID‐19 has produced large‐scale exposure to the pandemic, the wide variation in direct exposures to the virus, variations in individual and household vulnerability, as well as governmental approaches to managing the pandemic have resulted in wide variation in individual pandemic experiences. This study builds on existing research on threat perception by looking at two types of threat perceptions for COVID‐19: health concerns and economic concerns. Using survey data of adults in New York, Louisiana, and Washington states, this study explores people's level of concern for health and economic impacts to themselves and their associations with several pandemic‐related stressors. The results of this study demonstrate that reduced income during the pandemic was the only stressor that appeared to influence participants' COVID‐19 concerns across multiple analyses.
Tremors, floods, dry season, and other normal perils cause billions of dollars in monetary misfortunes every year around the globe. A huge number of dollars in philanthropic help, crisis credits, and advancement help are consumed every year. However endeavors to lessen the dangers of normal perils remain generally ungraceful crosswise over various risk types and don't really concentrate on regions at most astounding danger of debacle. Informal communities are assuming an undeniably significant job as early cautioning frameworks, supporting with quick debacle appraisal and post-fiasco recuperation. There is a requirement for both the general population and fiasco help offices to all the more likely see how web based life can be used to survey and react to catastrophic events. This work directs a various leveled multistage investigation dependent on numerous information assets, consolidating internet based life information and monetary misfortunes. This work attracts regard for the way that during a catastrophe, residents go to internet based life and most of tweets contain data about the tropical storm as well as its contact with negative estimation. This paper researches whether the mix of web based life and geo-area data can add to an increasingly proficient early cautioning framework and help with calamity evaluation.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges for scholars and government officials to predict people’s evacuation decisions under a conflicting natural disaster. In this study, we examined households’ evacuation and shelter intentions given the potential conflicts between the perceived risks from a hurricane and the coexisting public health crisis. We surveyed households living inside hurricane evacuation zones in Florida during the 2020 hurricane season. Data were first used to examine the evacuation and shelter intentions before and during the pandemic. We then measured respondents’ hurricane and COVID-19 risk perception, respectively. The impacts of both risk perceptions on respondents’ hurricane evacuation intentions were explored. We found that when people felt unsafe to stay home for a Category 2, 3, or 4 hurricane, their intended evacuation was about the same before and during the pandemic regardless of their COVID-19 risk perception. The COVID-19 risk perception, however, significantly lowered the evacuation intention for a Category 1 hurricane. It also significantly influenced evacuees’ preference for nontraditional shelters such as government-contracted hotels. The results of our study have practical implications for emergency management and public health governance. Our study also provides insights into decision-making under the conflict between natural hazards and infectious diseases.
European Governments must implement a public alerting system to reach mobile
phone users affected by major emergencies and disasters by June 2022. Cell
Broadcast (CB) is used to issue emergency alerts in several countries, but few studies
have considered the impact of messages on recipients. This paper presents the results
of a joint research exercise that explored recipients’ responses to CB messages that
warned of floods of varying certainty, severity, and urgency. We adopted a mixed
methods approach employing semi-structured questions to assess the needs and
perceptions of 80 workshop participants who received simulated CB emergency alerts.
Our results suggest that although emergency alerting is generally welcomed, it is
necessary to provide accurate and verifiable information, address accessibility
challenges, and to state location clearly and understandably. Participants raised
concerns about individual and community reaction to the unusual emergency warning
alert tone and handset behaviour, and potential desensitisation of recipients to
emergency alerting if it is over-used. This paper is the first to systematically study
recipients’ responses to CB alerts for flooding. Its results will be of benefit to regional
and national governments seeking to issue emergency alerts to a range of threats
(e.g., other geohazards, pandemics or civil emergencies).
Previous studies have reported differences between men and women in the adoption of preventive behaviors against infectious diseases. This study aims to examine gender differences on a set of psychosocial factors shown to influence preventive behaviors against infectious diseases such as COVID-19. We conducted a web survey (N = 1.004) a few weeks after the end of the peak of the first wave of infections in Chile. The survey assessed participants’ perception of risk and worry about the COVID-19 pandemic, confidence in the government’s competence and integrity in dealing with the crisis, attribution of responsibility to various stakeholders, and adoption of preventive behaviors such as hygiene, distancing, and information-seeking. Our results confirm significant gender-based differences for both the psychosocial factors and the adoption of preventive behaviors. We conclude that women show a higher level of worry and fear of the pandemic and are keener to adopt preventive hygiene and social distancing behaviors. Similarly, participants report a low level of trust in government authorities, with women reporting the lowest trust level. The implications of these findings for the design of future risk communication strategies are discussed.
The opening of public shelters to provide evacuees with access to safety and welfare is a typical response to large-scale emergencies. In some countries, officials allocate people at risk to shelters based on the location of their residence or workplace and this advice is communicated to them in advance of an evacuation so they get to shelters quickly whilst avoiding overcrowding and associated secondary risks in the shelter. When an evacuation is called, some evacuees follow this advice and attend their allocated public shelter but others disregard the advice and select an alternative public shelter (e.g. the most convenient or nearest one) or go to a private shelter (e.g. a hotel or house of friends or family). Using data from Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA), supplemented with data from interviews with 142 emergency officials from 10 countries, this paper explores how evacuee behaviour matters when planning public shelters. Our novel contribution is a model-based integer programming simulation analysis of public shelters from the combined effect of three evacuee behaviours: comply with official advice and attend their allocated public shelter; attend the nearest public shelter; attend a public shelter of personal preference. Sensitivity analyses identifies the importance of these behaviours on the time to evacuate the city, finding that if evacuees disregard the official allocation then widespread over-occupation of public shelters can result which significantly increases the time to evacuate. This paper discusses OR modelling issues and the implications of these results for disaster preparedness, evacuee behaviour and emergency response.
Wildfires pose significant risks to populations living in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). We examine the influence of WUI residents’ risk perceptions as well as other cognitive constructs (guided by Protection Motivation Theory) likely to influence their decisions to take wildfire mitigation actions before and shortly after a near-miss wildfire. We used a drop-off/pick up survey to compare pre- and post-fire risk perceptions and mitigation actions of residents living in close proximity to the 416 Fire in southwestern Colorado, USA. Our research was guided by the general question, does a near-miss wildfire influence residents’ perceptions and self-reported fire risk mitigation behaviors? Specifically, we examined the cognitive appraisals and physical risk factors influencing residents’ previous and planned mitigation actions both before and after the fire. Our findings show risk perceptions declined significantly after the fire while residents’ intentions to take nine different fire risk mitigation actions increased. These results suggest near-miss fire events result in simultaneous “let-downs” and “wake-up calls” among affected residents. Near-miss wildfires present a unique opportunity for wildfire community preparedness, outreach, and engagement programs to capitalize on an increased willingness to take risk mitigation actions. However, these programs may face difficulties in communicating the continued threat of subsequent fire events.
Near‐miss events, which occur when failure is avoided by chance, can lead to subsequent risky decisions due to base‐rate neglect. According to construal level theory, a lower level construal increases the neglect of base rates by giving more weight to case‐specific information. In four studies, I empirically test the hypothesis that low‐level construals moderate evaluations and decisions following near‐miss events by increasing the reliance on case information. In Study 1, I find that a higher construal correlates with negative assessments of a project manager responsible for a near‐miss incident. In Study 2, I prime participants to have a high‐ or low‐level construal and find that the manager evaluations in the low construal group are higher than evaluations of those in the high construal group. In Study 3, I examine whether construal levels impact decision making in personal contexts regarding natural disasters and provide evidence for the underlying mechanism of base‐rate neglect. In Study 4, I show that the construal levels affect decision making given that near‐miss information extends to variations in the temporal distance to near‐miss information. Thus, I find support that construal levels systematically influence evaluations and decision making following near‐miss events.
Well intentioned leaders make decisions and act in the best interest of their companies when fulfilling their professional duties; however, they can never guarantee that things will go according to plan. When negative consequences occur, leaders may be vilified by peers, colleagues and the system around them. Little consideration is given to the fact that these leaders are people - human beings susceptible to the same emotional and psychological scarring as everyone else. The questions explored in this research are: 1) What is the inner transitional experience of leaders who are vilified? 2) Why does this experience occur? Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis through an ethnography lens, I explored the inner experience of vilified leaders through thematic analysis of first-person narratives, employing a critical incident method. I conducted research over 48-hours of live discussions and semi-structured socio-analytic interviews of vilified leaders around the world. Mapping the inner experience led to the development of an above-the-surface conceptual matrix documenting 5 meta-experiences encountered sequentially in 3 stages. Looking below the surface revealed a negative inner experience taking place while traversing 2 transitional states. I also delved deeper into the realm of the subconscious to understand the cause of the inner experience. This study recounts the experience of being “vilified,” versus most literature presenting an observer’s perspective. Insights gained have widespread applicability in both professional and personal domains. Practically applying this research could assist affected individuals in this situation to cope with and recover from what has been a traumatic experience. The paper concludes by highlighting limitations of this study, possibilities for further research and presents provocative remarks about vilified leaders in these circumstances.
Keywords: leader; villains; stigma; threat appraisal; identity threat; transition; cognitive dissonance; sense making; trauma; well-being; recovery; victim.
Word Count: 12,955
Well intentioned leaders make decisions and act in the best interest of their companies when fulfilling their professional duties; however, they can never guarantee that things will go according to plan. When negative consequences occur, leaders may be vilified by peers, colleagues and the system around them. Little consideration is given to the fact that these leaders are people - human beings susceptible to the same emotional and psychological scarring as everyone else. The questions explored in this research are: 1) What is the inner transitional experience of leaders who are vilified? 2) Why does this experience occur? Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis through an ethnography lens, I explored the inner experience of vilified leaders through thematic analysis of first-person narratives, employing a critical incident method. I conducted research over 48-hours of live discussions and semi-structured socio-analytic interviews of vilified leaders around the world. Mapping the inner experience led to the development of an above-the-surface conceptual matrix documenting 5 meta-experiences encountered sequentially in 3 stages. Looking below the surface revealed a negative inner experience taking place while traversing 2 transitional states. I also delved deeper into the realm of the subconscious to understand the cause of the inner experience. This study recounts the experience of being “vilified,” versus most literature presenting an observer’s perspective. Insights gained have widespread applicability in both professional and personal domains. Practically applying this research could assist affected individuals in this situation to cope with and recover from what has been a traumatic experience. The paper concludes by highlighting limitations of this study, possibilities for further research and presents provocative remarks about vilified leaders in these circumstances.
Keywords: leader; villains; stigma; threat appraisal; identity threat; transition; cognitive dissonance; sense making; trauma; wellbeing; recovery; victim.
Coastal communities in Connecticut suffer from chronic flooding and erosion damage due to the effects of severe weather events, storm surge and sea-level rise. To reduce the negative socioeconomic consequences wrought by these natural disasters, it is necessary to activate social or human resilience that could enable these communities to efficaciously adapt to and mitigate the flood and erosion outcomes in their natural environment. This project aims to advance our knowledge of the human factors that promote individual and collective actions for building community resilience against the threat of flooding, erosion and sea-level rise. Specifically, the project invited residents from the Town of Fairfield and the City of Bridgeport to share their beliefs, attitudes, intentions and behaviors that may promote their individual and collective efficacy necessary to build a resilient coastal community.
https://circa.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1618/2019/10/Carolyn-Lin_CIRCA-Project-Report.pdf
This study explores predictors of risk information avoidance intentions in the context of a novel environmental threat—induced earthquakes in Texas. Given the paucity of research on risk information avoidance, this work was guided by a cognitive information behavior model. Survey data (N = 541) from a random sample of Texas adults allowed us to explore these variables. While previous research has shown risk information seeking intentions to be robustly guided by a number of constructs, our current data suggest that risk information avoidance intentions may be more narrowly predicated on risk information avoidance-related subjective norms, attitudes, and perceived knowledge insufficiency. We discuss these findings and suggest avenues for future environmental risk research.
People's past experiences with a hazard theoretically influence how they approach future risks. Yet, past hazard experience has been conceptualized and measured in wide‐ranging, often simplistic, ways, resulting in mixed findings about its relationship with risk perception. This study develops a scale of past hazard experiences, in the context of tornadoes, that is content and construct valid. A conceptual definition was developed, a set of items were created to measure one's most memorable and multiple tornado experiences, and the measures were evaluated through two surveys of the public who reside in tornado‐prone areas. Four dimensions emerged of people's most memorable experience, reflecting their awareness of the tornado risk that day, their personalization of the risk, the intrusive impacts on them personally, and impacts experienced vicariously through others. Two dimensions emerged of people's multiple experiences, reflecting common types of communication received and negative emotional responses. These six dimensions are novel in that they capture people's experience across the timeline of a hazard as well as intangible experiences that are both direct and indirect. The six tornado experience dimensions were correlated with tornado risk perceptions measured as cognitive‐affective and as perceived probability of consequences. The varied experience–risk perception results suggest that it is important to understand the nuances of these concepts and their relationships. This study provides a foundation for future work to continue explicating past hazard experience, across different risk contexts, and for understanding its effect on risk assessment and responses.
Individuals' past experiences with a hazard can encompass many different aspects, which can influence how they judge and respond to a future hurricane risk. This study, which utilizes survey data from coastal residents who are at risk from hurricanes, adds to understanding of past hazard experience in two ways. First, it examines six different aspects of people's past hurricane experiences and the relationships among them. Then, it draws on risk theories of behavioral responses to explore how these different experiences influence people's evacuation intentions for a hypothetical hurricane as mediated through multiple dimensions of risk perception (cognitive, negative affective) and efficacy beliefs (self efficacy, response efficacy). The results suggest that people can experience emotional or otherwise severe impacts from a hurricane even if they do not have experiences with evacuation, property damage, or financial loss. The results also reveal that different past hurricane experiences operated through different combinations of mediating variables to influence evacuation intentions. Some of these processes enhanced intentions; for instance, experience with evacuation, financial loss, or emotional impacts heightened negative affective risk perceptions, which increased evacuation intentions. Other processes dampened evacuation intentions; for instance, people with past hurricane-related emotional impacts had lower self efficacy, which decreased evacuation intentions. In some cases, these enhancing and dampening processes competed. Exploring people's different past weather experiences and the mechanisms by which they can influence future behaviors is important for more deeply understanding populations at risk and how they respond to weather threats.
Individuals’ past experiences with a hazard can encompass many different aspects, which can influence how they judge and respond to a future hurricane risk. This study, which utilizes survey data from coastal residents who are at risk from hurricanes, adds to understanding of past hazard experience in two ways. First, it examines six different aspects of people’s past hurricane experiences and the relationships among them. Then, it draws on risk theories of behavioral responses to explore how these different experiences influence people’s evacuation intentions for a hypothetical hurricane as mediated through multiple dimensions of risk perception (cognitive, negative affective) and efficacy beliefs (self efficacy, response efficacy). The results suggest that people can experience emotional or otherwise severe impacts from a hurricane even if they do not have experiences with evacuation, property damage, or financial loss. The results also reveal that different past hurricane experiences operated t...
Social Motivation, Justice, and the Moral Emotions proposes an attribution theory of interpersonal or social motivation that distinguishes between the role of thinking and feeling in determining action. The place of this theory within the larger fields of motivation and attributional analyses is explored. It features new thoughts concerning social motivation on such topics as help giving, aggression, achievement evaluation, compliance to commit a transgression, as well as new contributions to the understanding of social justice. Included also is material on moral emotions, with discussions of admiration, contempt, envy, gratitude, and other affects not considered in Professor Weiner's prior work. The text also contains previously unexamined topics regarding social inferences of arrogance and modesty. Divided into five chapters, this book: * considers the logical development and structure of a proposed theory of social motivation and justice; * reviews meta-analytic tests of the theory within the contexts of help giving and aggression and examines issues related to cultural and individual differences; * focuses on moral emotions including an analysis of admiration, envy, gratitude, jealousy, scorn, and others; * discusses conditions where reward decreases motivation while punishment augments strivings; and * provides applications that are beneficial in the classroom, in therapy, and in training programs.This book appeals to practicing and research psychologists and advanced students in social, educational, personality, political/legal, health, and clinical psychology. It will also serve as a supplement in courses on motivational psychology, emotion and motivation, altruism and/or pro-social behavior, aggression, social judgment, and morality. Also included is the raw material for 13 experiments relating to core predictions of the proposed attribution theory. © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Individuals who identify changes in their local climate are also more likely to report that they have personally experienced global climate change. One way that people may come to recognize that their local climate is changing is through information provided by local TV weather forecasters. Using random digit dialing, 2,000 adult local TV news viewers in Virginia were surveyed to determine whether routine exposure to local TV weather forecasts influences their perceptions of extreme weather in Virginia, and their perceptions about climate change more generally. Results indicate that paying attention to TV weather forecasts is associated with beliefs that extreme weather is becoming more frequent in Virginia, which in turn is associated with stronger beliefs and concerns about climate change. These associations were strongest for individuals who trust their local TV weathercaster as a source of information about climate change, and for those who identify as politically conservative or moderate. The findings add support to the literature suggesting that TV weathercasters can play an important role in educating the public about climate change.
Ongoing challenges to understanding how hazard exposure and disaster experiences influence perceived risk lead us to ask: Is seeing believing? We approach risk perception by attending to two components of overall risk perception: perceived probability of an event occurring and perceived consequences if an event occurs. Using a two-period longitudinal data set collected from a survey of homeowners living in a fire-prone area of Colorado, we find that study participants' initial high levels of perceived probability and consequences of a wildfire did not change substantially after extreme wildfire events in the intervening years. More specifically, perceived probability of a wildfire changed very little, whereas the perceived consequences of a wildfire went up a bit. In addition, models of risk perceptions show that the two components of overall risk perception are correlated with somewhat different factors, and experience is not found to be one of the strongest correlates with perceived risk. These results reflect the importance of distinguishing the components of overall risk and modeling them separately to facilitate additional insights into the complexities of risk perceptions, factors related to perceived risk, and change in risk perceptions over time.
© 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.
This study applies the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model to examine how information processing influences individuals' support for climate change mitigation policy. Perceived issue salience, attitude toward climate information, and systematic processing are positively related to policy support, whereas heuristic processing is not a significant predictor. The direct and indirect relationships illustrated in the model help expand the utility of the risk information seeking and processing model to address policy support. From an applied perspective, this study suggests important pathways to encourage systematic processing of information related to climate change, which may lead to increased public support for mitigation policies.
The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on findings from research on people's responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The PADM identifies three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehension of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)— that precede all further processing. The revised model identifies three core perceptions— threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions—that form the basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long-term threat. The outcome of the protective action decision-making process, together with situational facilitators and impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard adjustments) and identifies some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.
Guided by the risk information-seeking and processing model, this study examines positive and negative affect separately in their influence on information-seeking intentions and avoidance through structural equation analyses. The highlight is that information avoidance seems to be driven by positive affect, while information seeking seems to be more heavily influenced by negative affect. Another interesting finding is that informational subjective norms are positively related to both seeking and avoidance, which suggests that one’s social environment has the potential to strongly influence the way he or she handles climate change information. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
In an effort to better understand the ways in which risk messages can indirectly affect risk-related behaviors, this review explores the links between such messages and information seeking and processing. The narrative first offers a brief look at the literature that shores up salient concepts, and then moves to a model of risk information seeking and processing (RISP), constructed by Griffin, Dun-woody, and Neuwirth (1999), which seeks to organize those factors into a coherent framework. The RISP model, thus, serves as a crossroads for selected concepts synthesized from Eagly and Chaiken’s (1993) heuristic-systematic model (HSM) of information processing, Ajzen’s (1988) theory of planned behavior (TPB), and other bodies of research in communication and risk perception. Of particular interest is the extent to which the model can accommodate reactions to both personal risks and risks to persons and objects other than oneself. This last domain is particularly important to the development of policy in arenas such as public health and climate change. This review explores the theoretical underpinnings of the RISP model, and then summarizes a decade of studies that have examined a subset of RISP variables most closely related to information seeking and processing: channel beliefs, perceived information gathering capacity, and two motivation variables, information sufficiency and informational subjective norms. Finally, the authors explore the research potential of both the model and efforts to track the role of information in risk perceptions and behavior change.
Hurricane Ike made landfall near Galveston, Texas, on 13 September 2008 as a large category 2 storm that generated significant storm surge and flooding. This article presents findings from an empirical case study of Texas coastal residents’ perceptions of hurricane risk, protective decision making, and opinions of hurricane forecasts related to Hurricane Ike. The results are based on data from interviews with 49 residents affected by Hurricane Ike, conducted approximately five weeks after landfall. While most interviewees were aware that Ike was potentially dangerous, many were surprised by how much coastal flooding the hurricane caused and the resulting damage. For many—even long-time residents—Ike was a learning experience. As the hurricane approached, interviewees and their households made complex, evolving preparation and evacuation decisions. Although evacuation orders were an important consideration for some interviewees, many obtained information about Ike frequently from multiple sources to evaluate their own risk and make protective decisions. Given the storm surge and damage Ike caused, a number of interviewees believed that Ike’s classification on the Saffir–Simpson scale did not adequately communicate the risk Ike posed. The ‘‘certain death’’ statement issued by the National Weather Service helped convince several interviewees to evacuate. However, others had strong negative opinions of the statement that may negatively influence their interpretation of and response to future warnings. As these findings indicate, empirical studies of how intended audiences obtain, interpret, and use hurricane forecasts and warnings provide valuable knowledge that can help design more effective ways to convey hurricane risk.
In an effort to understand what motivates people to attend to information about flood risks, this study applies the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model to explore how local residents responded to damaging river flooding in the Milwaukee area. The results indicate that anger at managing agencies was associated with the desire for information and active information seeking and processing, as well as with greater risk judgment of harm from future flooding, greater sense of personal efficacy, lower institutional trust, and causal attributions for flood losses as being due to poor government management.
This study examined the accuracy with which Texas coastal residents were able to locate their residences on hurricane risk area maps provided to them. Overall, only 36% of the respondents correctly identified their risk areas and another 28% were off by one risk area. Risk area accuracy shows minimal correlations with respondents’ demographic characteristics but is negatively correlated with the respondent’s previous hurricane exposure and evacuation experience. Ultimately, risk area accuracy appears to have little significance because it is uncorrelated with evacuation expectations. Instead, the latter were related to respondents’ previous hazard experience and expected evacuation context.
This article contributes to the current discussion on how residents living in vulnerable areas make the decision to evacuate when they are in harms way. Key in this discussion is the question, what role does information and risk play in shaping evacuation behavior? This study used a sample of respondents from the greater New Orleans region (Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard Parishes) of the Twelve Parish Survey (N = 1,207) conducted prior to Hurricane Katrina. The findings indicate that information sources are vitally important in the evacuation process. By examining the role of information from authorities, family, and friends; visual imagery; and the media we found that individuals use a variety of sources when they decide to evacuate. Further, the importance of visual imagery in the evacuation process is discussed. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of information dissemination and its importance to members of the media and public policy makers.
This article examines the evacuation behavior of residents in two South Carolina communities, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach, during the 1996 hurricane season. Two hurricanes that approached South Carolina but hit in North Carolina allowed us to study the impact of repeated “false alarms”; (evacuations ordered based on expectations of a hurricane landfall that proved to be wrong). Differences in evacuation behavior, specific information and concerns prompting evacuation, and the reliability of information sources between hurricane events are examined to determine the impact of false alarms on the credibility of warning systems. Data were derived from a face‐to‐face survey of residents 2 weeks after Hurricane Fran in September 1996. We found that the role of official advisories was more limited than reported in previous research as people sought information on more diverse sets of concerns in their decision making. Reliance on the media and the Weather Channel, in particular, for storm characteristics and advisories was an important factor in evacuation decision making during both hurricane events. The perceived lack of reliability of gubernatorial warnings coupled with dependence on the media suggests that residents find other sources of information more personally relevant. Thus, while residents do not find that officials are “crying wolf,”; they are searching elsewhere for information to assess their own risk—what does it mean to me if there is a wolf? This increased attention toward individual differences in perceived threat may become more pronounced in future evacuations from hurricanes.
People are less likely to prepare for earthquakes and other disasters if they make fatalistic attributions for earthquake damage. The way that news media and public agencies present information about disasters may contribute to fatalistic attributions and judgments that the damage cannot be prevented. Attribution theory proposes that the distinctiveness and consensus of covarying events shape attributions. Four studies varied the distinctiveness of damage to a target building relative to other buildings and how much other earthquakes had damaged similar buildings to the target building (consensus and consistency). The conditions with high distinctiveness and high consensus and consistency enhanced attributions to building design and judgments that the damage was preventable. These findings have clear implications for civic education agencies and news reports; they show how agencies could reduce fatalism and facilitate preventive action by the way they present information about earthquakes and other disasters.
This study collected data on the evacuation from Hurricane Lili to answer questions about households' reliance on information sources, the factors affecting their decisions to evacuate, the timing of their hurricane evacuation decisions, and the time it took them to prepare to evacuate. The results replicated previous findings on the sources of hazard information, evacuation concerns, and the timing of evacuation decisions. In addition, they provide new information about evacuation preparation times and the finding that household characteristics are uncorrelated with evacuation decision times or evacuation preparation times.
Studies of hurricane evacuation have often noted that women are more likely than men to evacuate, yet few examined those differences and tried to explain them. This paper undertakes a series of bivariate and multivariate analyses to examine the relationship between evacuation and gendered variations in socioeconomic status, care-giving roles in the household, evacuation incentives, exposure to risks, and perception of risk. A series of hypotheses are developed and tested in order to help explain why women are more likely than men to evacuate. The data used come from a cross-sectional survey of 1,050 coastal North Carolina households affected by Hurricane Bonnie, which made landfall near Wilmington, N. C., on August 25, 1998. Results from a series of bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses indicate that women are more likely to evacuate than men because of socially constructed gender differences in care-giving roles, access to evacuation incentives, exposure to risk, and perceived risk. We find, in part, that women are more likely to evacuate because, compared to men, they live at greater exposure to risk and have a heightened perception of risk. Yet, those men who are at greater risk and do perceive heightened risk are more likely to evacuate than women with comparable risk exposure and perception. Future studies of disaster response should distinguish clearly between the intention to evacuate and the capacity to do so.
When do voters hold politicians accountable for events outside their control? In this article, we take advantage of a rare situation in which a prominent election in a large city followed a devastating flood. We find that voters are willing to punish the incumbent mayor for the flood if they believed the city was responsible for flood preparation. Moreover, we find that the attributions of responsibility for flood preparation are shaped by whether respondents lived in a neighborhood hard hit by the flood and the degree of knowledge they possessed about local, rather than national, politics. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the psychol- ogy of attribution for voting behavior and electoral outcomes. Unlike the economy, or even war, it is not obvious that natural disasters are always relevant to citizens' political decisions. It makes intuitive sense that the economy, war deaths, and similar social outcomes are related to voting behavior. These macro political outcomes are arguably direct consequences of government policy, facilitating the attribu- tion of responsibility to the government. It is less clear whether voters should treat natural disasters as a political variable. Natural disasters probably cause more damage to human life and property than even the most severe economic recession, but there are few conditions under which reasonable people can actually believe that the government was responsible for a flood, an earthquake, or a tornado. In this article, we ask a simple but important question: who is held responsible for natural disasters and why? The psychology of responsibility attribution suggests that voters may be motivated to look for an explanation when catastrophes happen, and government plays a major role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters. Voters may choose to blame
This article reviews the main insights from selected literature on risk perception, particularly in connection with natural hazards. It includes numerous case studies on perception and social behavior dealing with floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, wild fires, and landslides. The review reveals that personal experience of a natural hazard and trust-or lack of trust-in authorities and experts have the most substantial impact on risk perception. Cultural and individual factors such as media coverage, age, gender, education, income, social status, and others do not play such an important role but act as mediators or amplifiers of the main causal connections between experience, trust, perception, and preparedness to take protective actions. When analyzing the factors of experience and trust on risk perception and on the likeliness of individuals to take preparedness action, the review found that a risk perception paradox exists in that it is assumed that high risk perception will lead to personal preparedness and, in the next step, to risk mitigation behavior. However, this is not necessarily true. In fact, the opposite can occur if individuals with high risk perception still choose not to personally prepare themselves in the face of a natural hazard. Therefore, based on the results of the review, this article offers three explanations suggesting why this paradox might occur. These findings have implications for future risk governance and communication as well as for the willingness of individuals to invest in risk preparedness or risk mitigation actions.
Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes and focuses in particular on the process of imagining or simulating events that might occur in one's personal future. Simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events, which may help to explain why imagination and memory can be easily confused. The article considers both pitfalls and adaptive aspects of future event simulation in the context of research on planning, prediction, problem solving, mind-wandering, prospective and retrospective memory, coping and positivity bias, and the interconnected set of brain regions known as the default network. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Risks tend to be judged lower by men than by women and by white people than by people of colour. Prior research by Flynn, Slovic and Mertz [Risk Analysis, 14, pp. 1101-1108] found that these race and gender differences in risk perception in the United States were primarily due to 30% of the white male population who judge risks to be extremely low. The specificity of this finding suggests an explanation in terms of sociopolitical factors rather than biological factors. The study reported here presents new data from a recent national survey conducted in the United States. Although white males again stood apart with respect to their judgements of risk and their attitudes concerning worldviews, trust, and risk-related stigma, the results showed that the distinction between white males and others is more complex than originally thought. Further investigation of sociopolitical factors in risk judgements is recommended to clarify gender and racial differences.
Flood risk management in the Netherlands is on the eve of shifting primarily from prevention towards risk management, including disaster preparedness and response and citizen participation. This study explores Dutch households' perceived responsibility for taking private protection measures. Survey results (n = 658) indicate that flood risk perception is low, that 73% of the respondents regard the government as primarily responsible for protection against flood damage, but that about 50% viewed disaster preparedness as an equal responsibility between themselves and the government. Thus, a substantial part of the public may have an open attitude to communication about disaster preparation measures. Dilemmas for increasing citizen participation are discussed.
Starting from a general understanding that experience of hazards is important in motivating protective response, this paper reports a novel study to understand the relationship between householder experience, understanding and response to two natural hazards – flooding and sea‐level rise – in three contrasting high‐risk areas of England. It presents a generic Individual Understanding and Response Framework (IURF) as a simple but potentially valuable means of comparing hazards and expressing the dynamic processes that appear to heighten or attenuate understanding and drive or constrain responses to specific natural hazards. The IURFs confirm the complexity of factors underlying householder understanding and response. Even in high‐risk areas a lack of recent direct personal experience of flood events serves to attenuate understanding and to constrain motivation to take personal action. For sea‐level rise, as yet a largely ‘unknown’ hazard in the local context, perceived responsibility to act is transferred to others. Social networks are confirmed as important local sources of information often more important than the official. People evaluate potential protection or mitigation measures in terms of their efficacy, cost and implementation barriers. The paper concludes with discussion of the communication and engagement implications for communities at risk from natural hazards.
This effort argues for an augmented version of the relatively new Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) Model, and subsequently applies this augmented RISP model specifically to environmental risk information seeking. Nearly 830 randomly selected members of a national panel were surveyed about their attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors regarding seeking information about an environmental risk—global warming. Path analysis suggests the promise of applying an augmented RISP model to environmental risk information seeking (R2 = .72 for information seeking intent) and reinforces prior research, which indicated the notable contribution that perceived social pressures may have when individuals seek such information (β = .68, p < .001).
A study on risk perception and causal explanations of road accidents was conducted on 553 subjects with various kinds of experience and knowledge about traffic and automobile driving. Accident and risk perception was studied by means of three independent variables: the subjects' occupation, driving experience, and accident history. The results showed that all categories of subjects were inclined to overestimate the threat represented by the risk of a road accident. Furthermore, all subjects tended to make more external causal attributions that defended their role in traffic safety and accident prevention. Experienced drivers, but also less experienced ones, exhibited a higher level of risk-taking than other subjects, and also made more external and fatalistic causal attributions. Finally, accident history does not seem to have a notable effect on accident and risk perception, but it does appear to result in more cautious behaviour. The findings are discussed in terms of their possible contribution to accident diagnosis and prevention.
Reviews research concerned with motivational distortion in the attribution of responsibility for an accident. Results of a statistical combination of 22 relevant studies suggested a statistically significant but weak tendency to attribute more responsibility to an accident perpetrator for a severe than for a mild accident. An examination of interacting variables found that, consistent with K. G. Shaver's (see PA, Vol 44:6696 and 44:14405) defensive-attribution hypothesis, when observers were personally and situationally similar to the accident perpetrator, they tended to attribute less responsibility to the perpetrator when accident severity increased. The opposite was the case when the perceiver and the perpetrator were dissimilar. Experiments using stronger S-involving manipulations also appeared more likely to produce evidence in support of the defensive-attribution hypothesis than did experiments with low-involvement manipulations. Results provide an example of how perceiver's self-protective motives influence responsibility attributions. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conducted 3 experiments, using 44, 34, and 46 undergraduates as Ss, to examine the following proposition: An O of an accident, to preclude the possibility that he could cause such a misfortune, will attribute responsibility for its occurrence to a person potentially responsible, and will attempt to differentiate himself from that person. This tendency will increase with the probability of occurrence and the severity of the accident's consequences. It was found that heightened probability of occurrence, especially in the form of personal similarity to the potential perpetrator, lessened O's attributions of responsibility and increased his ascription of carefulness to the perpetrator. Avoidance of blame for the accident thus appeared to be more important to Os than avoidance of the occurrence. A category of perceiver response defensive attribution was proposed to encompass this attributional error and similar perceiver biases. The other major finding was a consistent failure to replicate E. Walster's (see 40:3) finding of increased assignment of responsibility with increased severity of outcome. This was surprising, as severity-dependent attribution would appear to be consistent with legal and moral tradition, and self-protection. Such attribution might be an essentially "irrational" response that is suppressed when O is alerted to the attribution task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The just world hypothesis states that people have a need to believe that their environment is a just and orderly place where people usually get what they deserve. The present article reviews the experimental research that has been generated by the just world hypothesis. Considerable attention is devoted to an experiment by M. J. Lerner and C. H. Simmons (see record
1966-11086-001). In light of the existing empirical findings, an elaboration of the initial hypothesis is offered, and it is suggested that people's need to believe in a just world affects their reaction to the innocent suffering of others. Finally, recurrent conceptual misinterpretations and methodological errors found in the literature are identified. (73 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
South Florida residents who experienced Hurricane Andrew evaluated the credibility of the hurricane-related information from television as more trustworthy than other sources. Contrary to what was hypothesized, the broadcast medium of television (but not radio) was evaluated on the dimension of expertise as being higher than newspapers. As predicted, interpersonal sources were judged high on trustworthiness, but much lower on expertise than any of the mass media sources. The findings indicated that when people wanted factual information and self-help information, they expressed reservations about the credibility of other people (friends, neighbors or relatives). In such cases, there was a marked tendency to place emphasis (or faith) in television.
The aim of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measure of hurricane risk perception. The utility of such a measure lies in the need to understand how people make decisions when facing an evacuation order. This study included participants located within a 15-mile buffer of the Gulf and southeast Atlantic U.S. coasts. The study was executed as a three-wave panel with mail surveys in 2010-2012 (T0 baseline N = 629, 56%; T1 retention N = 427, 75%; T2 retention N = 350, 89%). An inventory based on the psychometric model was developed to discriminate cognitive and affective perceptions of hurricane risk, and included open-ended responses to solicit additional concepts in the T0 survey. Analysis of the T0 data modified the inventory and this revised item set was fielded at T1 and then replicated at T2 . The resulting scales were assessed for validity against existing measures for perception of hurricane risk, dispositional optimism, and locus of control. A measure of evacuation expectation was also examined as a dependent variable, which was significantly predicted by the new measures. The resulting scale was found to be reliable, stable, and largely valid against the comparison measures. Despite limitations involving sample size, bias, and the strength of some reliabilities, it was concluded that the measure has potential to inform approaches to hurricane preparedness efforts and advance planning for evacuation messages, and that the measure has good promise to generalize to other contexts in natural hazards as well as other domains of risk.
Protective actions for hurricane threats are a function of the environmental and information context; individual and household characteristics, including cultural worldviews, past hurricane experiences, and risk perceptions; and motivations and barriers to actions. Using survey data from the Miami-Dade and Houston-Galveston areas, we regress individuals' stated evacuation intentions on these factors in two information conditions: (1) seeing a forecast that a hurricane will hit one's area, and (2) receiving an evacuation order. In both information conditions having an evacuation plan, wanting to keep one's family safe, and viewing one's home as vulnerable to wind damage predict increased evacuation intentions. Some predictors of evacuation intentions differ between locations; for example, Florida respondents with more egalitarian worldviews are more likely to evacuate under both information conditions, and Florida respondents with more individualist worldviews are less likely to evacuate under an evacuation order, but worldview was not significantly associated with evacuation intention for Texas respondents. Differences by information condition also emerge, including: (1) evacuation intentions decrease with age in the evacuation order condition but increase with age in the saw forecast condition, and (2) evacuation intention in the evacuation order condition increases among those who rely on public sources of information on hurricane threats, whereas in the saw forecast condition evacuation intention increases among those who rely on personal sources. Results reinforce the value of focusing hurricane information efforts on evacuation plans and residential vulnerability and suggest avenues for future research on how hurricane contexts shape decision making.
© 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.
Perceptions of institutions that manage hazards are important because they can affect how the public responds to hazard events. Antecedents of trust judgments have received far more attention than antecedents of attributions of responsibility for hazard events. We build upon a model of retrospective attribution of responsibility to individuals to examine these relationships regarding five classes of institutions that bear responsibility for food safety: producers (e.g., farmers), processors (e.g., packaging firms), watchdogs (e.g., government agencies), sellers (e.g., supermarkets), and preparers (e.g., restaurants). A nationally representative sample of 1,200 American adults completed an Internet-based survey in which a hypothetical scenario involving contamination of diverse foods with Salmonella served as the stimulus event. Perceived competence and good intentions of the institution moderately decreased attributions of responsibility. A stronger factor was whether an institution was deemed (potentially) aware of the contamination and free to act to prevent or mitigate it. Responsibility was rated higher the more aware and free the institution. This initial model for attributions of responsibility to impersonal institutions (as opposed to individual responsibility) merits further development.
© 2014 Society for Risk Analysis.
Following a survey of forest homeowners in rural Michigan to assess the value of reducing the risk of damage from wildfires at the wildland-urban interface, focus group discussions were conducted with a subset of survey participants to learn about their perceptions concerning specific components of fire hazard (e.g., how fires start, fire control, fire damage), their understanding of how fire protection responsibility is allocated between government and individuals, and their under standing of and preferences for alternative fire management strategies. Focus-group data were analyzed using a framework based on behavioral economics and psychometric models of risk. Attributes associated with the fire risk help explain the relative popularity of different fire protection strategies. Because participants consider forest fires inherently uncontrollable, and the resulting damage essentially random, they are only weakly supportive of investments in firefighting infrastructure, unlikely to take all possible steps to safeguard their own properties, and resolute in their emphasis on solutions that reduce the number of fire ignitions. Their universally negative perceptions of prescribed fire may ultimately preclude its use as a risk management tool in Michigan's wildland-urban interface forests.
This study focuses on levels of concern for hurricanes among individuals living along the Gulf Coast during the quiescent two-year period following the exceptionally destructive 2005 hurricane season. A small study of risk perception and optimistic bias was conducted immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years later, a follow-up was done in which respondents were recontacted. This provided an opportunity to examine changes, and potential causal ordering, in risk perception and optimistic bias. The analysis uses 201 panel respondents who were matched across the two mail surveys. Measures included hurricane risk perception, optimistic bias for hurricane evacuation, past hurricane experience, and a small set of demographic variables (age, sex, income, and education). Paired t-tests were used to compare scores across time. Hurricane risk perception declined and optimistic bias increased. Cross-lagged correlations were used to test the potential causal ordering between risk perception and optimistic bias, with a weak effect suggesting the former affects the latter. Additional cross-lagged analysis using structural equation modeling was used to look more closely at the components of optimistic bias (risk to self vs. risk to others). A significant and stronger potentially causal effect from risk perception to optimistic bias was found. Analysis of the experience and demographic variables' effects on risk perception and optimistic bias, and their change, provided mixed results. The lessening of risk perception and increase in optimistic bias over the period of quiescence suggest that risk communicators and emergency managers should direct attention toward reversing these trends to increase disaster preparedness.
In this paper, we seek to resolve the conflicting findings in literature about the effect of past hazard experience on response to warning. We find that different definitions of past experience in different studies are at the root of these conflicting findings. We disaggregate past experience into different types, identifying three types of past experiences that are most relevant in terms of affecting response. We test the relevance and importance of these three proposed types of past experience in an empirical context of warnings issued and response to these warning for two cyclonic events in India. We then provide the implications of the most relevant aspects of past hazard experience for emergency managers seeking to improve target audiences’ response to warning.
Accidents, one often hears, "happen"; we accept, and even expect, that they will be part of daily life. But in situations in which injury or death result, judgments of responsibility become critical. How might our perceptions of risk influence the ways in which we allocate responsibility for an accident? Drawing from attribution and risk perception theory, this study investigates how perceived controllability and desirability of risk, in addition to perceived danger and recreational risk-taking, relate to attributions of responsibility for the cause of unintentional injury in a unique setting: U.S. national parks. Three parks, Mount Rainier, Olympic, and Delaware Water Gap, provide the setting for this survey-based study, which considers how park visitors (N = 447) attribute responsibility for the cause of a hypothetical visitor accident. Results suggest that respondents tended to make more internal (i.e., related to characteristics of the victim), rather than external (i.e., related to characteristics of the park, or park management) attributions. As respondents viewed park-related risk as controllable, they were more likely to attribute the cause of the accident to the victim. Moreover, among other significant variables, having experienced a similar accident predicted lower internal causal attribution. Opportunities for future research linking risk perception and attribution variables, as well as practical implications for the management of public outdoor settings, are presented.
Large samples of students in the Midwest and in Southern California rated satisfaction with life overall as well as with various aspects of life, for either themselves or someone similar to themselves in one of the two regions. Self-reported overall life satisfaction was the same in both regions, but participants who rated a similar other expected Californians to be more satisfied than Midwesterners. Climate-related aspects were rated as more important for someone living in another region than for someone in one's own region. Mediation analyses showed that satisfaction with climate and with cultural opportunities accounted for the higher overall life satisfaction predicted for Californians. Judgments of life satisfaction in a different location are susceptible to a focusing illusion: Easily observed and distinctive differences between locations are given more weight in such judgments than they will have in reality.
A domain-specific model of public opinion is proposed in which attribution of issue responsibility is a significant determinant of individuals' issue opinions and attitudes. Two dimensions of issue responsibility are assessed: causal responsibility focuses on the origins of the issue, while treatment responsibility focuses on alleviation of the issue. The model is tested with a sample of four issues: poverty, racial inequality, crime, and terrorism. The results indicate that for all four issues attributions of responsibility significantly affect issue opinions independently of partisanship, liberal-conservative orientation, information, and socioeconomic status. In general, agents of causal responsibility are viewed negatively while agents of treatment responsibility are viewed positively. In conclusion, the importance of domain-specificity for public opinion research is considered.
An important, but mostly overlooked aspect of science communication is the potential role US television weathercasters may perform. In some cases, these specialists may be the only source of scientific information that some people encounter on a regular basis. Audience research indicates that the weathercast is the most-watched part of the local newscast and the primary reason people choose a local television news product. But very little is known about the qualifications of weathercasters as a group and their inclinations as individuals to educate viewers about scientific topics. This study begins with results from the largest survey ever conducted about television weathercasters. Most of them say their broadcasts are appropriate venues for teaching their audiences about science, and most of them are already doing so. Other results provide a baseline foundation on a variety of other work-related factors, including the consistent public service function for most television weathercasters that includes science communication in their communities. Finally, the study discusses the increasing number of initiatives recently being developed to formalize this potentially powerful role of television weathercasters as prominent science communicators.
Hurricanes and associated storm damage remain a constant threat to the health, safety, and welfare of residents in Florida. Hurricane risk perception has been found to be an important predictor of storm preparation, evacuation, and hazard adjustment undertaken by households, such as shutter usage. Planners and policy makers often employ expert risk analysis to justify hazard mitigation policies, yet expert and lay risk assessments do not always agree. Because the public is increasingly involved in planning and policy decision-making, consistency between “expert” risk assessments and lay perceptions of risk are important for policy legitimization and compliance. This article examines factors contributing to hurricane risk perceptions of single-family homeowners in Florida. Utilizing data from a statewide survey, we first map and spatially analyze risk perceptions throughout Florida. Second, we examine the influence of location on shaping homeowner perceptions along with other factors, such as knowledge of hurricanes, previous hurricane experience, and socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The findings suggest there is a good deal of consistency between residing in locations identified by experts as being high hurricane wind risk areas and homeowner risk perceptions. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for land use and hazards planning.
Prior research has found little or no direct link between beliefs about earthquake risk and household preparedness. Furthermore, only limited work has been conducted on how people's beliefs influence the nature and number of preparedness measures adopted. To address this gap, 48 qualitative interviews were undertaken with residents in three urban locations in New Zealand subject to seismic risk. The study aimed to identify the diverse hazard and preparedness-related beliefs people hold and to articulate how these are influenced by public education to encourage preparedness. The study also explored how beliefs and competencies at personal, social, and environmental levels interact to influence people's risk management choices. Three main categories of beliefs were found: hazard beliefs; preparedness beliefs; and personal beliefs. Several salient beliefs found previously to influence the preparedness process were confirmed by this study, including beliefs related to earthquakes being an inevitable and imminent threat, self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, personal responsibility, responsibility for others, and beliefs related to denial, fatalism, normalization bias, and optimistic bias. New salient beliefs were also identified (e.g., preparedness being a "way of life"), as well as insight into how some of these beliefs interact within the wider informational and societal context.
Contemporary science and environmental news coverage of global warming increasingly portrays scientific consensus. Political news coverage of global warming, however, typically portrays controversy. We hypothesize that attention to science and environmental news is associated with beliefs more consistent with the global warming science and higher risk perceptions, and that the opposite is true of attention to political news. Furthermore, we hypothesize that science-based beliefs and risk perceptions are positively associated with support for policies aiming at reducing global warming. These hypotheses were confirmed by survey data from a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 2,164). These findings support and extend the cognitive mediation model of news learning and have important practical ramifications.